SpaceX’s futuristic Starship looked like it had reached a touchdown on Wednesday, but then exploded with so much force on the runway that it was thrown into the air.
The failure occurred minutes after SpaceX declared success. Two previous test flights crashed into fireballs.
The full-scale prototype of Elon Musk’s proposed Mars ship has risen to an altitude of more than ten kilometers after taking off from the southern tip of Texas on Wednesday. It descended horizontally over the Gulf of Mexico and then turned upright just in time to land.
The shiny rocket-shaped rocket remained intact this time around, and SpaceX commentator John Insprucker went on to declare that ‘third time is a charm as the saying goes’ before SpaceX ended its webcast of the test.
But then the Starship exploded and was thrown into the air before crashing into flames in the ground.
There was no immediate comment from SpaceX on what went wrong. But Musk looks at the bright side in a tweet: “Starship 10 ended up in one piece!” RIP SN10, honorable discharge. ”
He added: “SpaceX team is doing a great job! One day, the true measure of success will be that Starship flights are commonplace. ”
Musk plans to use Starships to send humans to the moon and Mars.
The last two prototypes reached similar heights in December and February, but sank and exploded in Boca Chica, Texas.
Each of these last three test flights lasted six and a half minutes.